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Alan Smale

Woo-hoo! Next weekend — Fri Sept 25th through Sun Sept 27th — I’ll be at the Baltimore Book Festival. During the course of the weekend we’ll have 30+ authors at the SFWA Tent of Awesomeness, and I’ll be one of ’em. Sunday is my big day, with 3 panels and a signing, but I’ll certainly be around the other days too. Including the Saturday, 6pm-7pm: Meet the Author Social. Which, looking at the list of authors attending, I think is going to be pretty great.

My schedule for Sunday is As Follows:

11am-12 Noon: Design Your Own World. “Join us in a Rousing Game of Stump the Panelists with a Worldbuilding Mashup – Audience Participation Encouraged. Learn what goes into creating fantasy and science fiction worlds.”

4pm-5pm: Timey-Wimey Stuff: Time Travel, Alternate History, and Historical Fantasy. “Sometimes past is present and future is past — especially around a time traveler. KNOW BEFORE YOU GO: Learn what’s what when we change the past, and how to avoid historical goofs and time travel gaffs.”

Panelists: DH Aire, Tom Doyle, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Alan Smale.

The full online schedule for the SFWA Tent of Awesomeness — along with details of who else is going to be there — can be found at:

(2) Wednesday 19th, 19:00-19:45, 300D (CC) Panel: To Include or Not To Include… Evaluating Writing Critiques. “When you’ve had a manuscript critiqued, you’ve gotten feedback… likely tons of it. But how do you sort out the good advice? What do you do with conflicting advice? New and mid-level writers can be led astray by critiques as easily as helped by them. This panel will discuss how to choose the advice that benefits your writing while still keeping it your story.” Panelists: Alan Smale (M), Karen G. Anderson, Jennifer L. Carson, Scott Edelman, Patricia Briggs.

Having participated in a Writers of the Future workshop, Taos Toolbox, and two Rio Hondos, and having had a variety of beta readers for books and stories over the years (and critiqued many other writers too), I may have some opinions about this. 😉

(3) Thursday 13:30-14:00, 301 (CC) Reading. From Clash of Eagles, or the upcoming sequel Eagle in Exile? You choose!

(4) Thursday 19:00-19:45, Bays 111B (CC) Panel: Connecting Your World’s Past with its Present. “The sense of ancient history in The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire is palpable and helps to make these series particularly rich. When you develop a speculative environment, do you build the ancient history early on, or do you write the current history and then go back to weave in elements of the past? What are some examples of where developing the past worked seamlessly…and examples where it seemed grafted on?” Panelists: Julia Smith (M), Peter Charron, Patricia MacEwen, Alan Smale, Lezli Robyn.

I’ve never seen a panel title like this before. Quite thought-provoking, and should be fun – especially as my old friend Peter Charron from Taos Toolbox will be on the panel too, and I know -he’ll- have smart things to say…